Wire Services: The A.P.'s Cliche Hunt

Haste is the standing excuse of the
newsman whose deadline bouts with the typewriter let a cliche or two
slip past his careless eye. In an effort to reduce the cliche content
of its own copy, the Associated Press, which must cope with haste to a
greater degree than most news-gathering agencies, decided to enlist the
aid of a computer. From ditors and staff writers all over the U.S., the
A.P. assembled a list of 469 hackneyed words and phrases. These were
fed into a Univac 1105, along with 375,000 words of wire...